


everything casts a shadow

by lostandlonelybirds (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Series: Birthday Gifts <3 [5]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Damian Wayne, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bit of strength kink, Bondage, Bottom Dick Grayson, Canonical Character Death, Daddy Issues, Dark Dick Grayson, Dependency, Depression, Dick Grayson is Batman, Dick Grayson was Renegade, Dom/sub Undertones, Frottage, Grief/Mourning, Guilty Pleasures, Gun Kink, Impact Play, Inspired by Richard Siken, Light Masochism, Loneliness, M/M, Master/Pet, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Humiliation/Degradation, Mouth-Fucking, NSFDG: Not Safe For Dick Grayson, No Beta We Die Like Me Googling This Shit, Past Relationship(s), Past Underage Sex, Post-Infinite Crisis (DCU), Praise Kink, Slade Wilson is a Bad Dude, Top Slade Wilson, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unsafe Gunplay, blink and u miss it murder-esque kink, but also denial of praise kink, he fantasizes about killing Slade mid-coitus but don't we all, just for Qqqqqqqq, minor daddy kink, probably part of the masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-21
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-21 21:42:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/lostandlonelybirds
Summary: "Little Bird," Slade says with a smirk, and Dick's not in the suit to separate himself the way he needs. Because Slade knows him the way Roy knows a motorcycle engine and the way Bruce knows blood spatter patterns and the way Dick knows how to fly. He knows him in an instinctive, obsessive way that is ever improving and constantly in practice. And Dick, as the pattern goes, doesn't have the energy to resent it of him. Not now. Not even with Blüdhaven's ruins still engraved in his eyelids.Maybe he's masochistic. Or maybe they just deserve each other.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Series: Birthday Gifts <3 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883293
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	everything casts a shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withthekeyisking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthekeyisking/gifts).



> For the lovely iconic talented wonderful supportive Q I am so so so glad to know and call friend. I really hope you like this, because I made it just for you my dear. Happy late bday <3
> 
> This is set in a world where Bruce Wayne really did die during the Crisis, and where Damian Wayne never existed, so you have a Dick Grayson with no support system grieving a father and playing Batman without any anchors. Of course, Slade Wilson takes advantage as he would <3
> 
> Title and fic inspired by the poem:
> 
> I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.
> 
> A box made out of leaves.  
> What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.
> 
> Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.  
> I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.
> 
> From the landscape: a sense of scale.  
> From the dead: a sense of scale.
> 
> I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.  
> Everything casts a shadow.
> 
> Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything.
> 
> -Richard Siken, Detail of the Woods.

Zatanna used to say that rain has a cleansing effect on the heart and the soul – _and the cock_ , Constantine would always interject with a filthy leer of promise. Rain purifies negative energy from a space, murder or magic, and rain settles the anxious mind. The three of them had made love in the rain once, intertwining limbs and the glow of magic refracted throughout the cold droplets. Three hearts aligned in a crystalline world of skin and water, for a perfect moment.

Now, today, rain isn’t cleansing. He’s in a tuxedo that isn’t his (hanging off his frame like drapes on a mannequin, like something big and heavy and fake and ill-suited, because the tuxedo isn't his) staring at the body of his father. Tim’s beside him, pale and red-eyed, clutching to Steph’s arm like it’s the only thing holding him together. Maybe it is, Dick wouldn’t know.

They haven’t spoken in weeks, since Dick suggested Tim make his own mantle and move on from Robin.

“How did he die?” Dick asks Clark, a hint of Bruce’s cold creeping into his tone.

Clark sees it, concern shining through. His shoulders slump, and after a beat he can’t meet Dick’s eyes.

“Omega beam,” he says. “None of us saw it coming.”

And isn’t that how it always is? Isn’t it always the non-supers dying? Taking that final blow? Being the martyrs when the world needs martyrs? Because faster than a bullet apparently doesn’t mean shit on Apokolips, and Diana’s shield hadn’t shielded Bruce when it had mattered.

He wonders if it had rained like it’s raining now when Bruce had died, if the ice-cold droplets had rammed against the Manor windows like a warning and Dick just hadn’t noticed. He’s not the World’s Greatest Detective; he hadn’t needed to notice those kinds of things before. Not as Robin. Not as Nightwing.

Not with a bat-sized safety net in the shape of a father there to catch him, there to save him.

“You never do,” Dick mutters, and maybe it’s unfair and maybe it’s cruel, but he doesn’t have the heart to care. He doesn’t have the energy to care. Clark’s face crumples, a guilt-ridden thing he can’t face, and Tim’s angry and grieving attached to Steph’s hip, and Diana’s watching this all with a remote expression, some blank mask she’s perfected over the years with Bruce’s help that still shows signs of that ever-hated pity, and Dick…

Dick can’t take it.

So he leaves, and no one calls him back. Not Clark with his guilt-filled eyes, not Tim with grief carved into his stony features, not Diana with pity cracking through her mask.

(They never do when he storms off, it’s always him chasing after broken things like there’s ever a hope of repairing them.)

* * *

Grief is a familiar demon for Dick. It’s something he’s well-acquainted with, something he’s known since childhood. He’s grieved friends and he’s grieved family and he’s even grieved a father before, but something about losing Bruce is different. Because _Bruce_ hadn’t just been family or friend or father; he’d been all of them, and he’d been a mentor and confidante and a guide and a manifestation and symbol of Dick’s new life and Dick’s ability to live and Dick’s roots when he’d needed roots to feel anchored.

Losing Bruce, losing those roots and that home and that safety net, is worse than anything he’s ever known. It’s a type of pain that cuts him to the core, that cracks every wall and lets poison seep in and leaves him adrift in an ocean of things unknown and things unexplored.

With Bruce Wayne declared dead, assets fall to him. The fortune, the fame, the custody of one Tim Drake, the mantle and city he’s never wanted to own, and the company he has no clue how to run. Bruce had began preparing Tim for the role of CEO, teaching him the kinds of things he’d need to know once Bruce named him as successor, but it had been a recent thing. Bruce hadn’t found time or reason to alter his will before now. So it all goes to him.

And Tim, despite every measured plea, despite every moment where Dick’s trying not to beg and trying not to burden his little brother despite that being all he really wants to do, leaves. Because he thinks Bruce Wayne is alive, and Dick knows he isn’t.

Because he knows what a father looks like cold on the ground on a rainy day, and he knows what a father looks like without a heart or hope. He knows, knows the pain and grief, and he knows Bruce Wayne is dead despite Tim’s protests.

He asks Tim to stay, and Tim leaves, and Dick accepts it because what other choice does he have?

(at the end of the day, he’s never the one to really leave, the one to stay gone. It’s always him being walked away from, him being replaced, him being left behind in the world of the living. Romantic, platonic, familial…they all leave in the end. So Tim leaving isn’t a surprise, and Dick doesn’t even have the energy or piece of mind to feel hurt at the abandonment.)

* * *

Being Batman is easier and harder than he thought it would be.

He’d always been terrified of the loneliness of the mantle, the inherent isolation and separation from loved ones. Because he’s always known he’d never take a Robin if he were to be Batman; he wouldn’t let a kid fight by his side after all his experience fighting at Bruce’s. The thing he hadn’t anticipated was being alone without Batman as an excuse, being isolated without the weight of Gotham on his shoulders. Isolation, after everything that had gone down in Blüdhaven and everything that had happened after Donna’s death, is a familiar friend.

The hard parts come from the responsibility, the reputation, the impossible standards he can’t reach because he’s _not_ Bruce and he’s never going to _be_ Bruce. He’s not as tall and he’s not as strong, and he’s not used to fighting with a cape after the years without it. The GCPD doesn’t trust him, and the League is wary of him, and the criminals that have been around, the ones who can _see_ Nightwing even through the cowl, aren’t afraid.

He has to make them afraid, so he does.

He hits harder than he should and harder than Bruce would on a normal day, sends criminals to the hospital without hesitation. He holds villains like Nygma and Tetch off rooftops and has to force his thoughts away from darker contemplations. He is cold and he’s angry and he’s everything Bruce was, and he still can’t get it right.

He still can’t repair his relationship with the GCPD, and he still can’t repair his relationship with Tim, and Alfred left for England to grieve, and Lucius is on his ass about running the company, and it…

It’s all too much.

It’s _always_ too much, now.

* * *

Dick lost his virginity in an abandoned warehouse at fifteen years old.

It hadn’t been the sweetness of Koriand’r – gentle fingers and wandering hands – or the intoxication of Roy – whisky-tainted and cigarette-scented. Slade Wilson’s hands had settled on his shoulders, one eye and one eyepatch staring _through_ Dick, like he could see Dick’s soul, and he’d said _they haven’t stopped searching despite your promises. Give me one good reason not to kill them_.

So Dick had dropped to his knees, fumbling with Slade’s zipper and belt, and said _you get me if they live. I’ll kill you if they die._

And Slade had laughed, fucking into Dick’s mouth and said _for a kid, you sure know how to suck cock._

( _Is it kids in general, or me in particular?_ He’d wondered, the question burning in his eyes as Slade forced his chin up, forced him to watch Slade’s pleasure flit across his aged face.

 _You_ , Slade had murmured as he came. _Just you_.)

He thinks of that time whenever he smells cigars and cognac. He thinks of the way Slade’s beard had scratched his skin, the way his cock had burned when he’d thrusted in. He thinks of the way he’d sweat, and how he’d felt like crying even as the orgasm sent him into shaking, shivering, spiraling pleasure.

Dick thinks of the way his limbs had ached for days every time he has sex, and it always has the aftertaste of regret and tears in the afterglow.

(Normally, he _only_ thinks about that night after sex, like a fucked-up reminiscence. He doesn't know why he's thinking of it now, why he's thinking of it in his dead-father's suit in his dead-father's city with his dead-father's burdens and his dead-father's ghost over his shoulder and on every darkened rooftop. He doesn't know why, but here he is, at three am, alone and thinking about cognac and cigars and sex. He thinks about the past and the present and how it all seems to meld together in one soup of fucked-up-ness. He thinks about Slade, and that night, and something in him burns. It isn't a pleasant burn either, like everything else it's painful.)

* * *

Jason Todd makes his debut with a sidekick named Scarlet and the type of scorn befitting of an ex-lover (especially _Dick's_ ex-lovers); complete with a dildo helmet, dramatic cape, and cheesy catchphrases that would make even Kid Flash-era Wally West ashamed. Somehow, Jason's relapse into the less sane side of behavior is entirely his fault, and Dick's so used to everything being his fault that he just says _god, fine, okay, fuck off_ or doesn't say _any_ of that because Jason drugs him and ties him up (and aren't you supposed to get dinner before this kind of shit, _Jesus_ ) and then puts his identity up for sale in some fucked up eBay bidding war. He escapes, of course, with Steph saving his ass and only being a bit hesitant with him (because he'd had a screaming match with Babs for dragging Steph back in, for bringing her back when they'd already lost her once like they'd lost Jason once and even if she hadn't _really_ died it still _felt_ like she had and-)

Babs calls him reckless and Steph says he's grieving and Dick really, _really_ doesn't care what terms they're using to categorize his behavior when there are fun assassins roaming about and murders to solve and all this shit falling apart because he's _not_ Bruce and he'll _never_ be Bruce and he doesn't think that can change. Doesn't think he'll ever be enough.

(And Jason's borderline suicidal, so lonely and desperate and in pain, and Dick doesn't know how to reach out, doesn't know how to help. He's hurting too, he's grieving too, but he doesn't _get_ the luxury of breakdowns or trips around the world, does he? He doesn't get to show it, and he doesn't get to be the unstable one even if he _feels_ like the unstable one, and he's given so many chances to Jason already that he can only feel a bone-deep exhaustion concerning his predecessor, concerning the seething hatred Jason feels towards him.

 _You're not Batman_ , he says with every breath. And Dick just wants to scream.)

* * *

Years ago, Dick had tried to save someone. He'd tried to save _anyone_ , but someone in particular. Rose Wilson had been a girl with a potential for good, and so Dick had tried and tried and _tried_ to push her on the right path, to help her make the right choices, to offer her key information (and maybe turning her against her father had been calculated, manipulative, every bit as bastardly as everything he's ever yelled at Bruce for, but this is Slade and Slade deserves it, and Slade's done _worse_ ). He'd tried to save Rose Wilson, and he'd damned his city instead.

And Slade had told him so with that infuriating calm, cool, collectiveness. A mask without the need for a _literal_ mask. And God had Dick hated him.

 _Give me seventy-two hours,_ he'd pleaded, and Slade had tilted his head, and said _what do I get in return?_ because Slade Wilson is, first and foremost, a mercenary. And mercenary's require payment. But one can't forget what _else_ Slade is: an egotistical bastard with an endless desire for complete and utter control over Dick in any aspect he's able to manage.

So Dick says, _you know what_ , and whores himself out for a city that's been poisoning him for months and a city that's raped him, and nearly killed him half a dozen or so times, and it's fine.

Because Slade Wilson says _seventy-two hours_.

(Chemo drops after thirty-eight, and Dick burns along with his city.)

* * *

Love is this: a thing of nature, a forest filled with paths travelled and not travelled, winding and twisting around the falling crunch of leaves. The change of seasons, green to orange, bare tree limbs to ones dressed and decorated. Lonely hearts and lonely air meeting at a fork in their trail; a union.

Love is not this: a celestial body high in the sky, alone and beautiful but ultimately untouchable. The ebb and flow of tides in changing times, tumultuous and ever-receding, too afraid to truly brush against the shore. A scale upon which one will be weighed; dead or living. 

Love is this: staying, forever. Weathering together. Being an _us_ and a _we_. Stitching places in each other's lives and feeling fulfilled by it, like it's something you never knew to ask for or want for.

Love is not this: leaving her wedding to someone else. Dark eyes in place of green. Rooftops in rain. Corpses and laughter. Cities and circuses burning. Leaving and being left, as is all that is known. Deceptions and honeyed words and cigars and cognac.

Love is this: patient, kind, forgiving, beautiful, miraculous, powerful.

Love is not this: meant for Dick Grayson.

* * *

He's surprised it's taken Slade thing long, honestly. Dick's been working himself to a state of collapse for ~~weeksmonthsyears .~~ He's not meant to be alone in this mausoleum of a city, wearing a mantle he'd been forced to take up out of duty more so than desire. He's not meant to be alone heading a billion dollar corporation, or alone leading the Justice League, or alone against the GCPD, or alone in the Penthouse because he can't _bear_ to stand in Wayne Manor when Bruce isn't there. He's not meant to be alone.

It's like there's a void, a place for another person that no person ever fills. There on patrol when Dick breaks persona and puns. There in the Penthouse when Dick burns pancakes for the thousandth time and eats chinese leftovers from the previous week. There in the board room when he can do the math but just _can't_ at the same time. There when his friends, his team, is being stupid and he can't say that because Dick Grayson wouldn't. There in front of the Batsignal when Gordon's lecturing him for being too rough and Batman's too professional to snap back about the increasing amount of police brutality cases filed against the GCPD. It's like someone is meant to be there, meant to groan and complain and snap when Dick can't snap, but he's never met them, or they've never existed, or he's long since driven them off entirely along with everyone else.

There's always been a void, but now...now he fights against its burden like Sisyphus and his bolder, and it always crushes him in the end.

(He's not meant to be alone. He's meant to have a home, to have an identity, and you're not supposed to find those in someone else but Dick always _has_. He's always defined himself by his father and his lovers and his brothers and his friends, builds himself into their lives so they don't have to even try to fit into his. When he's alone, he's formless clay waiting to be molded. Shaped. Of use to someone. And Slade...Slade always pops up when he's alone. When he's at his lowest. Seeping into Dick's bloodstream like a corrosive, burning away anything in his path. Manipulative and cold and everything Dick can't resist like this.

Dick can _never_ resist like this.)

"Little Bird," Slade says with a smirk, and Dick's not in the suit to separate himself the way he needs. Because Slade knows him the way Roy knows a motorcycle engine and the way Bruce knows blood spatter patterns and the way Dick knows how to fly. He knows him in an instinctive, obsessive way that is ever improving and constantly in practice. And Dick, as the pattern goes, doesn't have the energy to resent it of him. Not now. Not even with Blüdhaven's ruins still engraved in his eyelids.

Maybe he's masochistic. Or maybe they just deserve each other.

"Wilson," he says flatly, ignoring the way Slade's brow cocks, the way he sets his hip against Dick's kitchen counter and crosses his arms like he's meant to be there. They haven't spoken since Blüdhaven. He hasn't looked for Slade since Catalina Flores went missing and showed up in Gotham Bay with a neat little bullet between her eyes fired at point-blank range (Slade's the only person who had ever known, and Dick supposes it's his form of an apology, his attempt at making up for the dishonored deal.) 

"That's not what you normally call me," Slade says in a low voice. It's Pavlovian what it does to Dick, unconscious association he's never cared to reverse. He's hard, and feels it without needing to check, feels it straining against the confines of his tight dress pants. He uncrosses his arms and pushes himself into Dick's space, not giving him the time to back away, not giving him room. He corners him against a different counter, well-muscled leg between Dick's thighs. "Isn't that right, _boy._ "

Dick lets out a low whine against his will, eyes wide and wild, darting around the room looking for an excuse, a shield, a reason. The kitchen doesn't offer him one. The exits don't offer him one either, and Slade knows it, tilts his head down so they're only inches apart, presses his groin into Dick's hard enough to make him gasp.

"Which title do I get today, Grayson? Which way are you going to submit?"

Dick's fist doesn't connect with Slade's nose like he'd meant it to. His other fist doesn't either, both wrists now in Slade's grip, pushed above his head. Memories flicker, the good, the bad, the ugly. Borrowed Donna's whip so Kori could tie him up and ride him slow. Cables too thick to cut through paired with near-deaths with no Bruce to save him. The second time Slade had had him, chains and a wall and barely any lube, hard enough to nearly make him sick.

This is a game Slade loves more than any other. He loves forcing Dick to _request_ things, forcing him to admit to this parasitic need for company, need for _intimacy_ , even if it's violent and bloody and the attention comes from a psychopath for higher. _I know what you need,_ he'd always croon, teeth latching onto Dick's neck, onto his earlobe. _You know what you need, boy. Ask for it._

Master or Daddy. Which type of submission did he not want to want today. Neither is sweet, but the rules are different. The _roles_ are different. Slade's tolerance for impertinence and Dick's ability to maintain some semblance of control differs between the two. But the second...the second has too many negative connotations now. The second makes him think of Rose Wilson's pouted drawl whenever she felt impatient or annoyed or wanted Slade to pay attention to her for half a second. _Daddy_ , she'd always say sarcastically, simultaneously sweet and sour, _could you get over your hard-on for murder for like five seconds here? Tell me if I'm doing this stance right._ (Because Dick would correct her, but she'd still craved connection with her father, still had wanted to be wanted the way Dick wants to be wanted. She'd been too much like looking in a mirror, and the only security he'd had was Slade, for all his faults, wouldn't fuck his daughter. That had never meant someone else wouldn't though, so Dick had tried to save her.)

"Master," he mutters, bitter and broken and so terribly _lonely_ like Slade had known he would be. Because he always knows, doesn't he? _Always_. He hasn't had sex since Slade, hasn't been touched in a non-violent way since Bruce's funeral. People haven't visited. People haven't kept in touch. There's nothing for them here in Gotham, after all.

"Magic word, Little Bird."

Dick sucks in a breath, tells himself _no_ , tries to tense, tries to stiffen, tries to muffle his arousal with some fragment of pain he had stored in this cruel mind of his, tries to be a better person than he is. But Slade's teeth are familiar at his neck, the scratch of his facial hair familiar, his copper-infused scent familiar. And familiarity is a comfort, and familiarity is all he really has homes in now, right?

(and if love is all he'd said it is, if love is a forest with crunching leaves and winding paths and changing seasons, than he's a closing heart in the tombstone made from those crunching leaves, a tombstone with only the light of a distant moon to offer cold comfort.)

(and there's a saying that home is where the heart is, that love is where your place is, but he doesn't have those anymore, and everyone needs a place. Everyone needs a place, and it shouldn't be in someone else, but people are how he's always defined himself, and Slade Wilson's defined him more than most.)

" _Please_ , master."

Slade's kiss is soft against his lips, fingers cupping his jaw in a way that's possessive more than loving. The way one might caress a precious gem or beloved book more than the way one might hold a lover.

"You're such a beautiful Little Bird for me." and, before Dick can return the kiss, before he can react in any way, Slade's hands go to his waist and he hoists Dick over his shoulder, the way Dick's carried children to safety from burning buildings. Dick _hates_ this position. "All that faked perfection hiding what you really are: _mine_."

* * *

The difference between him and Jason is Jason's never claimed to be anything other than what he unapologetically is. Jason's a killer, a murderer, a thief, and a drug lord who wages war on every small fry to piss him off in addition to every demented soul selling to kids or _selling_ kids or harming kids. He has his rules and his guidelines and where he dots the i's and crosses the t's and it's entirely efficient and logical and Dick hates him more than a little bit for it (making the wrong choice look so right).

Because Dick is, at his heart, very similar. He'd wanted to kill Zucco the same way Jason had wanted to push that man off a roof (even though he'd slipped without a need for Jason to cause it). He'd killed Blockbuster the same way Jason's men killed men. He'd killed Joker the same way Jason had killed the worst of his fellow inmates. Jason, unlike Dick, wears his kills like a banner or an armor, like they're something to be proud of. Dick hides his kills in the past with a sense of shame, like shadows quietly trailing after him, and him looking forward and pretending they didn't exist, pretending he had any right to say _we don't kill_. It hadn't been about superiority or whatever Jason would say if he knew; it had been about the tattered remnants of _his_ code and _his_ rules and _his_ morality, what little had survived Deathstroke's apprenticeship and all that loss.

There's one other key difference between him and Jason: Jason does the dirty work himself, Dick doesn't. He just fucks someone who does and pretends he's never crossed the line, back turned on the past with a sense of superiority.

(God, he's so fucked up.)

* * *

Unsurprisingly, watching Slade's back muscles flex as he moves, looking every bit the predator he is with Dick as the prey already caught, is hot. Unfairly hot. Downright sexy, when he's being honest with himself (a rare event). Slade doesn't hesitate, knowing where Dick's room is without guessing (which means his hunch about Slade breaking in before now accurate) and tossing him on the bed with only a quick glance to see how he'd landed. Dick, as is customary, doesn't move a muscle from his position, sprawled on his twisted sheets like a sacrificial virgin. 

But Slade's already taken that away too, so maybe just a _sacrifice_ that keeps giving.

"Chains, pet? Where are they?"

Dick could pretend he didn't keep them, but Slade hates lies and Dick doesn't want to deal with any anger right yet.

"Under the bed, third panel to the left."

"Good," Slade praises, disappearing from sight to locate them for a moment. He surfaces when he finds them, silver and clean, and he sets them on the bed along with a few of Dick's old toys. Riding crop, cock ring, etc, etc. Slade's smug about it, and Dick wishes his hit would've landed. Slade's version of bruises always suck, but the satisfaction of one _hit_ , one _retaliation_ , would've outweighed the physical consequences of it. A smug Slade is an insufferable Slade.

"Now," Slade says, slipping one hand behind his back to his third favorite gun holster. "I think you remember this part, Little Bird. Don't you?"

It's a thing of deadly beauty, Slade's Beretta 92FS is. Military grade handgun, the gun Dick had learned how to shoot with. It's also the gun he'd learned to do _other_ things with. 

"Yes Master," Dick says, crossing his legs and sitting up. Slade nods his approval, and hands him the gun handle first. When Dick takes it, Slade follows, breath hot against his ear.

"Remember what to do?"

A nod.

Slade holds his chin in a steady grip, gaze steely.

"Use your words, Grayson. You know better."

Dick sighs.

"Yes, Master. Sorry."

Slade lets him go, lips quirked. Dick does what he always does, inspecting the gun carefully, making sure it's handle and barrel are clean enough, making sure there's at least three rounds in the magazine, making sure safety is on (for the moment).

"It's good," he announces after a beat. Slade is quiet.

Slade threads his fingers through Dick's hair and yanks, hard enough that Dick winces when his gaze is forced up, neck bared. Slade moves in, teeth dragged against skin, bruises blooming in his wake. Possessive and obsessive; brands and bites are Slade Wilson's version of pissing on a fire hydrant. 

Dick keens, grip steady on the gun, wrapping one arm around Slade's waist to pull him closer. Slade, for the moment, complies. Pulls away from Dick's neck, one hand taking place of his lips, and his beard burns against Dick's skin, rough and hot against his chin when their lips meet, when Slade's tongue delves into Dick's mouth and tastes takeout food and copper from one good punch. Dick is pliant in Slade's arms, bucking a bit against Slade, hard as fucking ever, aching for more, but malleable. Agreeable.

The grip around his neck tightens when Slade pulls away, a hint of the bruising grip that could snap him like a toothpick creeping into Dick's memory. Warnings and red flags...Dick's good at ignoring them now. Dick keeps still, knowing if he moves that hand will tighten, knowing if he tries to touch himself it'll leave bruises.

The grip, after a moment, relaxes.

"Good, pet," Slade says after a pause, and his fingers move to Dick's, to the gun still tight in his grip. When Slade grips the handle, Dick lets it go, and when Slade clicks the safety off, he doesn't react. No point in reacting, as always, because if Slade wanted to kill him he'd do it honestly, and if Slade wanted to kill him he'd be dead (and he isn't even sure there's all that many people left to care when _he_ barely does. "Now, suck."

The tip of the gun is cold against his lips but he lets it past, thinking of three little bullets and desire like a forest fire licking at his skin, in his belly, eating any higher thinking he has. Slade's eye is molten when Dick hollows his cheeks around the barrel. One hand reaches out to pull at his hair again, but gentler this time. Slower, letting Dick mouth his way up and down the cold metal thing like it's a cock and can't kill him. Slade pushes it back when Dick pulls away, nearly choking him, and his finger's on the trigger and Dick doesn't even care, could probably take himself in hand and jerk off and still not fucking care.

"You always did love this part," Slade says conversationally, watching Dick's tongue drag on the metal with interest. "Danger's in your veins, right? Mom and Pop meet their fall and you keep chasing the highs of that. I bet Bats didn't help with that at all, did he? Addiction to his lifestyle makes you useful. Makes you convenient. We all know how much he loves those two little words in relation to his charity works."

Dick jerks back, away from the gun, jaw a bit sore, and spits: "Fuck _off_."

Slade smirks, and before Dick can gather the mind to punch him (or at least _try_ to punch him) again, he slaps Dick. It _hurts_ , the force of it slamming Dick's face in the opposite direction and leaving his face stinging and red.

" _Respect_ ," Slade reprimands, tapping the gun on his chin like a warning. "Remember your place."

And Dick, Dick fucking _hates_ him.

Hates that he's always here when Dick needs this, hates that Dick needs this and accepts this from him, hates that Slade took him when he was too young to know what it all entailed, hates that he doesn't hate this.

Dick hates.

And Slade knows.

And Slade doesn't fucking care.

Dick bares his teeth, furious and burning with it, alight with righteous indignation, and Slade slaps him again. Harder. More. It stings, stings in a way Dick lovehates, stings in a way that makes him buck his hips and flip their positions, the scrapped skin of his knuckles calling to the skin of Slade's jaw, the desire from crimson stains on his bundled sheets greater than any half-assed self-preservation instinct he's barely developed over the years (because falling is in his blood, dying is in his nurture, pain is triple-weaved into his DNA by the environment and by his genetics and by his own will, because some things change and some things don't and Dick's a volatile reaction that's as spontaneous as death, and Slade's always been a great catalyst for getting him to _react_ and react in ways he never should).

Skin meets skin, Dick's knuckles split, Slade smirks, and it reminds him of Joker's face against concrete, choked laughter, pale and cold under him. He wants it, in that moment. Wants Slade as dead as Joker had been, minus a Batman to save him. Slade's eye glints like he knows, like he can see it too, and he's so _smug_ he doesn't bother stopping Dick's second hit, or his third. His fourth, however, he catches, mouth a bit bloody, blood _Dick_ had put there, and he tuts in that infuriating way he always has, like he's teaching, like he knows more, like he's _better_ than Dick.

"You can do better than that, Pretty Bird. _My turn_."

Slade bucks his hips and Dick moans, feels Slade slide against him in that rough, frantic way he's always been partial too, and he lets Slade flip him, lets Slade climb atop him the way Catalina once had and the way Mirage once had and he barely cares, barely remembers, it barely hurts, and the hurt is good enough that it exaggerates his pleasure. He rocks against Slade, finding a rhythm, lost in revelations and memories, barely noticing the chains Slade wraps around Dick's wrists and the bedposts with military efficiency. No escaping without his say-so; the danger's half the fun here. 

"Fuck," Dick says, gasping when Slade bites the juncture where his neck meets his shoulder, pulling against the chains to hit him or pull him closer, to scratch him or stroke him, or do _something_. " _Fuck_."

Slade strips them both of their clothes in a blink, tearing Dick's at the seems and tossing them out of sight. His gun goes back in its holster, safety on, discarded with everything else, still coated in Dick's saliva.

"Open up," Slade coaxes, nipping at Dick's jaw, cock sliding against Dick's briefly, scalding and intense. "Open your mouth wide for me, pet."

Dick complies, watching Slade sit up, watching Slade's cock align with his mouth, feeling it full and heavy against his tongue as Slade slides in like it's his right. He hollows his cheeks around the cock, straining against the chains, bobbing along it and dragging his tongue the way Slade likes, a hint of teeth the way Dick likes doing it, and it's similar to the gun in that it's dangerous, in that it's stupid, in that the bullets make no difference in the simple fact that he shouldn't be doing it.

He doesn't stop, of course.

There's no fun in stopping.

Slade rocks into his mouth roughly, hips snapping and Dick's head rocking with it. Throat sore, jaw sore, Slade's scent thick in his nostrils, taste heady on his tongue. Precome he licks like ice cream, ignoring Slade's casual praises, the way he utters things like _you were made for this_ , and _perfect, pet_ , and _you love when I fuck your mouth, Little Bird, don't you?_ because those appease something in Dick that he doesn't want appeased, because the glow of praise has an aftertaste of guilt and bile, and he hates the come-down from it all. The come down from the highs Slade sends him to, fucking bastard.

 _Shut up,_ he wants to say, feeling Slade's cock slide back in, hitting the back of his throat without him choking (because Slade had him trained, because Slade has had him do this for hours between missions, sitting there under his desk and letting himself be used like a fucking fleshlight for nothing more than an orgasm, cheap and dirty). _Shut up. Shutupshutupshutup._

Slade pulls out a moment later, still hard and still dripping, and Dick blinks when fingers take the place of Slade's cock, sucks on them like he had the gun and he had the cock and hates himself for it. He feels the slicked-up fingers at his opening a moment later, feels the gentle coaxing and come-hither motions that tease his prostate, that send tingles up his spine and pleasure that's vile and wrong and that he seeks nonetheless.

( _Fucking_ , Selina Kyle had once told him, _isn't about the morals, kid. It's give and take. Pleasure for the hell of it._ )

Slade adds a second finger and Dick keens, shivering and shaking, skin singing and stinging from bruises and bite marks and kisses and pleasure like pain and guilt. Slade's other hand's cupping Dick's waist, thumb brushing over the brand that's been there since he'd turned fifteen and killed for the first time so Slade wouldn't go after Donna Troy. 

( _You're mine_ , he'd said over Dick's screams, over the agony of the hot metal melting his skin. _Now everyone can see that._ Because Dick can't fuck without it being seen, can't change without it being seen. His old suit had the lump of raised skin curved and curling visible, painful, possessive. He _hates_ his skin.)

He feels loose and stretched out before Slade slides in, parting his thighs and looking at him like he's owned, like he's just another gun or sword or bag of bullets Slade owns, and Dick tries to look away, tries to distance himself, but Slade's cupping his waist and fucking into him and he grabs his chin and forces Dick to stay in that moment, to acknowledge what's happening and _feel_ what's happening and see what's happening and know who is doing it. Every brush against his prostate feels like a punishment, every piece and part of pleasure he receives hurts like a wound or scar or bullet or fist.

"You just _love_ being fucked, don't you pet?" Slade says against his jaw, teeth sharp and familiar. "Being used like this, knowing your place, letting go. Feeling worth it, even if you're only worth a good fuck. Daddy Bats might've kept you if you'd done this for him, Little Bird. Sucks for him, doesn't it? Dead and rotting and he never felt your skin like this, never _owned you_ like I do."

"Slade-"

Slade slams back into him like a punishment, and it _aches_ in all the rightwrong ways.

"Master," he corrects. "Please just-" his own moan cuts him off when Slade thrusts in at a certain angle.

"Just what, pet?"

"Just _fuck me_ , Master."

Slade smirks.

"Good boy," and it's so fucked that the praise sends him spiraling as Slade picks up the pace, that the way this feels makes oxytocin curl in his primal brain, makes his stomach flutter and heart pound, and makes adrenaline race through his veins like he's in freefall with no sign of stopping. It's so fucked that the sound of skin slapping skin, the scent of precome and sweat and cigars and cognac, the taste of Slade and sound of him against Dick's skin is satisfying. It's so fucked that he can't help wanting this, can't help needing this.

His orgasm comes like a landing, like gravity's victory, and Slade's come fills him in a way that disgusts him. Guilt follows the high, no afterglow to speak of, and he doesn't need to leave for Dick to feel the drop, to want to curl into a ball and cry, to want to go to a church and speak to someone about things he doesn't believe in and _confess_ and hope and beg and plea for forgiveness. Because he hates this, hates Slade, hates himself.

Hates the way he slumps when Slade takes the chains off.

Hates the way he lets Slade's arm wrap around his waist, tugging him closer.

Hates the way he curls into Slade's warmth.

Hates the way he doesn't feel so alone.

Hates the way he can never fully hate this because he's too busy hating himself.

"You're mine," Slade Wilson says, teeth and smugness and blood from Dick's fists and satisfaction from Dick's body.

(Above all else, Dick hates that he can't deny it.)

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts?


End file.
